


An Awfully Long Time

by sparrowinsky



Category: Peter Pan & Related Fandoms, Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Genre: Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 08:24:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2805983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrowinsky/pseuds/sparrowinsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wendy Darling tells a great many stories, but some she keeps to herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Awfully Long Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littlebug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlebug/gifts).



> I've stolen shamelessly from a variety of Peter Pan stories. The timeline is internally consistent but may not match up with your preferred source.

**1920**

Wendy Darling is not a timid woman, no. Bold and bright and brilliant, she, in her own way.

Even when she marries, she thinks of herself still: Wendy Darling.

She married a bright-eyed, smiling man, with soft blond hair she likes to touch and dimples she likes to kiss, whose name she carries like the child she bore him, a weight tying her to the world. And yet, in her own thoughts: Wendy Moira Angela Darling.

Not a timid woman: a storyteller, a mother, a suffragette, a wife. Sometimes more a girl than a woman at all; sometimes she looks in the mirror and must lay down her brush, and stare and stare, searching for this person she’s become, when all she can see is who she was.

It strikes her at the strangest times: walking the park with Jane, at the dinner table with spoon to mouth, at her desk with pen in hand, abed with her husband.

I am Wendy Darling.

A thought she doesn’t dare examine too closely.

(A thought she needn’t examine at all: she knows, in her heart, why it strikes her still. She is still Wendy Darling, because Wendy Darling went to Neverland, and the woman she became never will.)

  
  


**1906**

Wendy becomes a pirate.

It's only for the briefest moment, a heartbeat of time. Wendy Darling becomes Red-Handed Jill, as fierce a piratess as ever sailed.

(What Wendy leaves out of the stories: she came to Neverland for childish adventure and there she grew up. Not for the sake of lost boys who called her mother, but for a wicked smile and wickeder voice that put growing-up into sudden perspective.)

Peter comes to her rescue. Of course he does: adventure is what Peter's for. And he sees the joy of pirate-hood aglow on her face, and suddenly he minds the Darlings leaving so much less.

It does not escape Wendy, that fact.

Nor does the irony: Red-Handed Jill would have gladly stayed in Neverland, with as much fervor as Wendy wished to return home. And yet it was Jill that tipped the balance.

  
  


**1907**

Peter promises to come back. Every spring, he says.

Wendy waits a very long time.

  
  


**1910**

A man comes to dinner.

His smile is sweet and his hair sun-touched, and his name is Peter.

Hope flares, wild and bright.

 

**1906**

Wendy forgives her boys everything, again and again. Their medicine is sufficient comeuppance. She forgives, she soothes, she sweeps, and most importantly: she tells stories.

Some of the stories are the ones her mother told: stories of little boys and girls, of grand adventures, of Peter Pan himself.

Some are the stories she’s read in her father’s books: gods and goddess and soldiers and war.

Some she makes herself, and when she reaches the end she’s always faintly disappointed.

 

**Winter, 1911**

Wendy knows by now that he’s not that Peter.

He’s sweet enough. Doesn’t dismiss her opinions overmuch, even makes her laugh now and again.

His station is a bit higher, her father’s wealth a little greater. It’s a good match.

So when he asks, she agrees.

The banns are posted, once, twice, thrice.

No backing out now.

  
  


**Spring, 1912**

A stranger comes to her wedding.

Just the one. All the rest: family, friends, straightforward connections.

He comes in at the end, long after forever hold your peace, when she might have taken it for an omen and ran as far as her legs would carry her.

His coat hasn’t changed, still a plush confection of bloody red. Still the same dark hair, the same piercing eyes. His appearance ought to cause an uproar, but he passes through her guests and there is not even a whisper of objection.

Perhaps, Wendy thinks, she is gone mad.

And when he stops before her, she should not go; should not accept the hand he holds out (the other held behind his back, as if to hide the cruelest part of himself, as if she doesn’t know it already), but she does.

In her memories, in her stories, she will blame the breathlessness on her corset, laced perhaps a little too tightly. And in her stories, she will never repeat what he said to her, nor what responses she gave.

Or the way his coat looked against the white satin of her gown and gloves, so bright it hurt the eyes. Or that he took his single dance and left, when she would have followed him back into the sky and straight on til morning.

Or the way Peter-her-husband watches her, too knowing, and she feels the ache in her bones of history repeated.

  
  


**1904**

Her mother might know other stories, but Wendy clamors for Peter Pan, please, more Peter Pan; endless stories of Peter Pan and Neverland.

Wendy, too, wants to never grow up.

 

**1913**

She loses a child.

It’s Michael that gets her through it, when everyone else fears she’s losing her mind.

Michael and his stories of Neverland.

 

**1925**

Jane’s voice, all excitement, carries easily through the nursery door. Jane’s voice and Mary’s too, and little John’s voice a piercing accompaniment.

And another voice, a sweet boyish lilt that strikes her straight to the heart. She leans against the door, choking on the violence of her emotions, not sure if it’s laughter or sobs that threaten her and leave her only able to gasp.

She wonders if it’s love, or hate, that deadens her limbs and trembles her heart and dampens her eyes.

And amidst it all, a flaring little core of pride, that she’s told the best story of her life; so truly and so well, that no one could doubt her.

  
  


**1914**

Jane lives, John dies.

Beautiful Jane, a delicate and exact recreation of her mother, as if Wendy had created her alone.

Wendy wonders if she stole her brother’s life with the name she gave her daughter, wonders how she can still find a smile at the little creature’s laugh when John Darling lies in dead in a far-off trench.

She writes the thought down, and every other.

The pen, it seems, suits her.

 

**1916 and 1919**

Mary and John are born, with another lost between.

They might be twins, with their dark hair and bright, laughing eyes.

 

**1925**

One Peter occupied in the nursery, the other abroad for business.

Wendy takes to the streets as a mother and married woman ought not, traversing alleyways with the assurance of long habit.

Down to the docks, where a strange ships awaits.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey littlebug, I hope this approximates what you were looking for! I seem to have drifted off the topic of "dark Neverland" onto "Wendy growing up," sorry about that, she kind of abducted the story.
> 
> I'm so glad for your prompt, this was a blast to write and I hope you enjoy it! Merry Holiday-of-Choice! <3


End file.
